In Texas, Assessing Flood Damage and Preparing for More

The National Weather Service predicted that record-breaking rains would continue in the region through the middle of next week.

GRETEL C. KOVACH

GRANBURY, Tex., June 28 — The sun emerged Thursday afternoon amid the thunderclouds that have soaked much of Texas in recent weeks, giving residents hope that the floodwaters will continue to recede.

But there was more bad news from the National Weather Service, which predicted that record-breaking rains would continue through the middle of next week. Most of Texas and Oklahoma remained under flood warnings and flash-flood watches Thursday night.

Officials in rural towns in two counties along the Brazos River, southwest of Fort Worth, asked hundreds of riverfront residents to evacuate their homes as dams upstream opened gates to relieve the water pressure.

In other areas, people were starting to assess the damage.

On Tuesday night, Renise Ejem, who lives in Granbury, about 40 miles southwest of Fort Worth, and her granddaughter had stopped by the mobile home of an elderly friend in Lake Granbury Harbor, a rural neighborhood near Robinson Creek. They watched the water rise up the steps and carry away the first new car Ms. Ejem had ever owned. She found it later in a tree.

When the water reached chest height, Ms. Ejem and her 5-year-old granddaughter climbed over the side of the mobile home and onto the roof. A part of the roof caved in, leaving a dark purple bruise on Ms. Ejem’s arms from shoulder to elbow.

Ms. Ejem pulled her 79-year-old friend up through the hole in the roof, and they waited on the roof while the refrigerator swirled in the muddy waters of the mobile home until a rescue boat arrived.

Before moving to Granbury in December, Ms. Ejem had lived in the Lake Granbury Harbor neighborhood for 16 years. “We’d seen the creek overflow, but we’d never seen flooding like that,” she said.

About 50 homes along the creek were flooded, sending half the neighborhood to sleep on cots in a church shelter, the authorities said.

Scattered rain continued early Thursday, with more than an inch and a half of rain falling on cities across the state, from Terrell in North Texas to Georgetown in Central Texas.

“There’s an upper level low, a low-pressure trough, stalled out over the area,” said Tara Dudzik, a Weather Service meteorologist in Fort Worth. “That’s why we’re getting all this rain.” A higher-pressure weather system building in West Texas is not expected to push the moisture back over the Gulf of Mexico until the middle of next week, Ms. Dudzik said.

Marble Falls, which had received 19.5 inches of rain in eight hours Tuesday night and early Wednesday, has since been dry, said Christina Laine, the city secretary.

“Now the fun begins with the cleanup,” Ms. Laine said. “Now that the water has receded, it looks pretty bad. There’s debris, leaves, garbage receptacles everywhere.”

More than 150 structures were damaged, and metal signposts and guardrails were bent back from the force of floodwaters. The Colorado River had risen at least 30 feet, and creeks in the city swelled to more than 80 feet wide.

On Thursday, city officials worked to restore drinking water and distributed supplies from three shelters to residents.

“The forecast unfortunately is rain for the next 14 days,” Ms. Laine said. But as long as it does not come all at once, she added, “I think we’ll be O.K.”

In North Texas, the authorities were also hoping the rains would stop. Sheriff Gene Mayo of Hood County said: “I don’t think anywhere in this area is safe. Because of the amount of the rain we’ve had, the ground is saturated.”

Josh Lemens had waited for hours on the roof of his mobile home in Lake Granbury Harbor with his wife, Tiffany, their two young sons, two dogs and a cat.

“We don’t know what we’re going to do,” Mr. Lemens said. “They’ve got to do what they’ve got to do upstream to keep those people from washing away up there. We’re just taking it one day at a time.”

The Lemenses’ neighbors agreed that creekfront living was not what it used to be.

“We’re talking about making this a weekend fishing deal. But we’re moving to higher ground,” said David Brashear, as he and his wife carried handfuls of clothes on the hanger out of their flooded home. “I’m 54 years old. I cannot afford to start over again.”